The BBC report quotes one connoisseur claiming that one reason there was so much good wine available was that the previous French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, preferred water.

But in fact the goal is to replenish the presidential party pantry with less expensive wines without taxing, so to speak, the public purse.

The Élysée said that “the proceeds from this
sale will be reinvested in more modest wines, and the excess will be returned
to the state budget.”

According to the New York Times, the Socialist Hollande was trying to contrast his simpler style as a “normal president” with the “bling bling” image of Sarkozy.

Still, that had not stopped the last Socialist president, François Mitterrand, from enjoying his favourite Burgundy and a St.-Estèphe, Haut-Marbuzet from the well-stocked cellar. Georges Pompidou, the Times said, preferred Chasse-Spleen, while Valéry Giscard d’Estaing favored fine Bordeaux from the Médoc.

If you want to add to your wine collection, you can fork out as much as 2,500 euros (about $3,360 Cdn) for a high-end vintage -- but there are some bargain bottles going for as little at 15 euros.

Gates is in Australia, and has made headlines over the past few days for
challenging China to increase the amount of money it commits to international
aid. Its current expenditure, Gates says, is "modest."

Moyo, meantime, is among Africa's most visible economic critics.

In her first book,
Dead Aid, published in 2009, Moyo condemned foreign aid to Africa, suggesting it
helps foster corruption and a sense of dependence and discourages
entrepreneurship.

But Gates is a huge proponent of aid.

Cue the clash of personalities.

I interviewed Moyo last July and today she emailed to say that Gates in a
Q&A period in Australia told an audience that she "promotes evil" and doesn't "know much
about aid."

"Such attacks add no value
in the important discussions on the challenges the world faces to deliver
economic growth, eradicate poverty, combat disease, and reduce income
inequality, to name a few."

A video posted on YouTube shows Gates answering a question about Moyo's book.

"The number of children dying in africa over past 20 years has been cut in half," Gates said, adding that Moyo's book, which he read, "actually did damage generosity of first world countries.

"I found that she didn't know much about aid, what aid is doing. She is an aid critic. It's moralistically a tought position to take.. books like that, they're promoting evil."

Moyo answers Gates' criticism that she doesn't know much about aid by
highlighting both her resume--she has been a consultant to the World Bank--and
first-hand knowledge that comes from being born and raised in Zambia, one of the
poorest aid-recipients in the world.

"I wrote Dead
Aidto contribute to a useful debate on why, over many decades, multi
billions of dollars of aid has consistently failed to deliver sustainable
economic growth and meaningfully reduce poverty," Moyo says. "I also sought to
explicitly explain how decades of government to government aid actually
undermined economic growth and contributed to worsening living conditions across
Africa.

"More than this, I clearly detailed better ways for African leaders, and
governments across the world, to finance economic development. I have been under
the impression that Mr. Gates and I want the same thing – for the livelihood of
Africans to be meaningfully improved in a sustainable way. Thus, I have always
thought there is significant scope for a mature debate about the efficacy and
limitations of aid. To say that my book “promotes evil” or to allude to my
corrupt value system is both inappropriate and disrespectful."

Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

The Canadian government doesn't want you to know most of the lessons it learned in the wake of the Arab Spring.

To recap, Canada's foreign affairs ministry managed responses to a string of emergencies from January to May 2011 as dictatorial governments faced the prospect of overthrow in countries such as Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.

Canada's foreign affairs ministry later commissioned a report to identify the lessons Canadian diplomats learned during the crises.

While those findings are included in the "Middle East and North Africa Crisis After Action Report," the vast majority have been redacted in a copy obtained by The Star under the Access to Information Act. This from a Canadian government that pledged when it took power in 2006 to offer the most open, transparent leadership Canadians had seen in years.

The foreign affairs ministry is willing to share snippets of information, such as "The government's consular response to the MENA emergencies was exceptional, involving the deployment of 47 DFAIT personnel to the region to assist with emergency management and the assignment of over 300 employees to the operations centre mainly to answer telephone calls from concerned citizens."

The report outlines how a brainstorming session was conducted with DFAIT senior management in February 2011, to determine how DFAIT would conduct its after action review. The ministry decided to debrief staff and create an interdepartmental survey.But most of its recommendations are too sensitive to share with Canadians.

Pages five through nine of the report are blacked out, citing Section 21 (1) a of The Access to Information Act, under which, "The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested that contains advice or recommendations developed by or for a government institution or a minister of the Crown."

On page 10 of the report, a breakthrough: recommendations No. 15, 17, and 18 have not been redacted:

"15. A dedicated resource should be identified in times of emergency to manage information flow, provide data to CFM and CED so that they can proactively interact with senior government officials, and respond to other inquiries.

17. Systematically record, and periodically update, a message which provides callers with key, general information on the emergency and/or directs callers to DFAIT's website for more information.

18. promote use of the department's online form as a means of registering a concern or enquiry regarding the wellbeing or whereabouts of an affected person."Page 11 is mostly blacked out, this time citing Section 15 (1), which allows the refusal of information that "could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada or the detection, prevention or suppression of subversive or hostile activities..."There is one exception - recommendation No. 19.

"Missions should complete the new MEP in detail, using a whole-of-mission approach. They then should train staff and test their plans, using the resources in CEP for assistsance if they are unsure how to conduct such an exercise."

Pages 12 through 18 are blacked out. And then a breakthrough on page 19:

"Recommendation 40. Emergency resource kits should be created for deployment into an emergency, including individual survival kits and kits to facilitiate operation of mobile offices or command posts. Consideration should be given as to where to locate the kits, i.e., in Ottawa, at missions or with the REMOs. Specific checklists should be made available online so missions can build their own kits."

The next page, No. 20, similarly offers a single morsel:

"Recommendation 42. Include emergency management training in the schedule of mandatory pre-posting training for all CBS going abroad, including those from OGDs."On Page 24, we learn "Canada evacuated 868 Canadian-entitled persons and 100 foreign nationals from Egypt and Libya during the Arab spring... (and) responded to 24000 emergency related calls."

Pages 25 through 38 are mostly blacked out, too, before the report's final page tells readers that "pages 39 to 111 withheld pursuant to section 26, under which "The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested ... if the head of the institution believes on reasonable grounds that the material in the record or part thereof will be published by a government institution, agent of the Government of Canada or minister of the Crown within ninety days..."

Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Rajani was a “midnight bride,” in the rugged Indian desert state of Rajastan: one of many who are too young to marry legally, at 18, but are wedded in secret, in late night village ceremonies. Only five, she toddled to her wedding in a pink t-shirt and plastic sun glasses. She had never met her husband-to-be, who was 10.

Her story, reported by Cynthia Gorney in National Geographic, is not unusual in the tragic world of child brides, who may be married off to cancel family debts, solidify clan relationships, rid a poor family of an unwanted mouth to feed or avoid a daughter’s “dishonor” from male attentions as she reaches puberty.

The sorry practise is highlighted in Ottawa this week at a photo exhibition to help support young girls who are forcibly married -- and save an estimated 142 million others from meeting the same fate over the next decade.

Presented at Carleton University’s Art Gallery, it was opened on Tuesday by Foreign Minister John Baird and Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose. The travelling exhibition, launched in 2012 by the UN’s population fund and the photo agency VII, was sponsored in Canada by the government, the university and UNFPA.

Photographed by Stephanie Sinclair and Jessica Dimmock, it features award-winning images that show the horrifying reality of the daily lives of girls whose childhoods are stolen and whose futures are held captive by poverty, custom and family control.

Many are taken from school before they can read and write, isolated from their friends and families and forced into sex and childbirth at ages when both can endanger their lives. Those who survive often live in near-slavery, dying prematurely from exhaustion and preventable diseases.

The statistics are daunting.

According to the World Health Organization, about 39,000 under age girls are married every day. At current levels, that’s more than 14 million a year. And, says Rachel Vogelstein of the Council on Foreign Relations, the author of a study released this month on ending child marriage, of the 140 million or more who will marry before the age of 18, 50 million will be younger than 15.

Although India accounts for 40 per cent of known child brides, the tradition is pervasive in South Asia, Sub Saharan Africa – as well as parts of Latin America and the Middle East, Vogelstein says in her report. The top five rates of child marriage are in Niger, Chad, Central African Republic, Bangladesh and Guinea, where more than 60 per cent of brides are younger than 18.

“The practise of child marriage is a violation of human rights,” says Vogelstein. “Every day girls around the world are forced to leave their families, marry against their will, endure sexual and physical abuse, and bear children while still in childhood themselves.”

Although marriage of girls under 18 is illegal in 158 countries, those that put little value on female lives often turn a blind eye.

Occasionally, girls manage to escape -- like 10-year-old Nujood Ali of Yemen, who became world famous by turning up in a city courthouse and announcing that she wanted a divorce. Her success encouraged others, and the liberated youngsters won public applause, though five years later Nujood is still battling for her rights.

Most are not so lucky.

The struggle to end child marriage depends on ensuring that girls are educated and have opportunities to earn a living. And above all, countries must attack the root causes that devalue the lives of girls and women from cradle to grave.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, human rights and politics from the former Soviet Union to South Asia and the Middle East. An Emmy-winning film, The Selling of Innocents, was based on her reporting on trafficking of girls in India.

It has been a busy day for coronavirus news.
Today, the World Health Organization confirmed five new cases of the virus, which the scientific community has now agreed to
call MERS, or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. The Saudi Arabian ministry of health also announced one more case and three deaths.

So, WHO's new global tally for MERS: 49 cases, 27 deaths (this does not include the cases from today's Saudi announcement). This gives a
mortality rate of 55 per cent (although the true death rate could be lower if there are undetected mild cases out there).

Meanwhile, two separate papers were
published today, shedding a bit more light on this mysterious new virus and providing more evidence that MERS can spread between people in a limited way. Both
papers examined clusters of MERS infections, a recent one in France
and one in Saudi Arabia from last fall.

The first paper, published in the Lancet,
analyzes France's first
cases of MERS, involving a 64-year-old Frenchman who visited Dubai for eight days in early April and fell
sick. He died on Tuesday. The second French patient – a 51-year-old man with no recent travel history –
shared a hospital room with the first patient
for three days and also caught the virus. He is still alive.

The second paper was published in the New
England Journal of Medicine and looks at a cluster of cases in a family living in urban Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia. In this case, a 70-year-old retired
soldier – again with underlying health
conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension – fell sick on October 5th with a host of ailments. He
and two of his sons (both of whom also later became sick) had travelled to Bahrain six
months earlier so that the father could seek treatment for chronic knee
pain.

The father died on October 23. Days later,
his eldest son – a Saudi factory worker who was a smoker but mostly healthy – was admitted to an emergency room shivering,
feverish and coughing up blood. He was discharged from the hospital but
returned hours later with dangerously low blood oxygen levels. He died
November 2nd – but one day later, his
16-year-old son, began coughing, wheezing and growing feverish. On
November 3rd, the man's 31-year-old brother also started showing symptoms. Both the teenager and his uncle eventually recovered, however.

The duo of papers detail epidemiological information, clinical details and specific tests performed to diagnose the MERS cases – all hugely valuable to public health officials and researchers working with what has so far been a paucity of good data.

To me, as a non-scientific observer of this new virus, here are some of the key takeways from these two new studies:

The incubation of this virus may be
longer than we previously thought. The authors of the Lancet paper say their
findings suggest that the virus's incubation period could reach nine to 12 days
(previous reports suggested a shorter incubation period of a week or ten days). This provides crucial information for public health officials on the alert for new cases of the virus; it could also mean that infected patients should be quarantined for longer periods.

The possibility that feces could play a role in spreading the virus. The Saudi study adds more
weight to a suggestion raised in the Lancet paper, that fecal contamination could be playing a role in spreading MERS. "Shedding of virus in stool peaked on day 13," according to the study, and three of the four men had gastrointestinal symptoms.

Fecal contamination of a sewage system has been suspected in one the most devastating SARS outbreaks in 2003 -- one that erupted at a Hong Kong residence and infected 320 people in
just three weeks. (See page 52 of this report).

We still don't know how people are
getting infected, even in these two clusters. With the French cases, the two
men shared a room (with their beds 1.5 metres apart) and a bathroom for three
days but it's unclear how or when the first man passed the virus to the second.
It’s possible that the second man was infected by respiratory droplets coughed
up by the first (although no medical procedures were performed on Patient One
that would generate aerosolized droplets, the paper reports) or through fecal
contamination, since Patient One had diarrhea.

The Saudi cluster is also puzzling. MERS
is genetically similar to a coronavirus found in bats and it is thought that
people are probably catching this bug from some animal source. But this Saudi
family has no pets and there are no domestic animals near their home; the only
relative who had any animal contact was the 31-year-old (the last one in the family to
get sick) – he had "attended the
slaughtering of a camel on October 24" but that was still more than two
weeks after his father, the first patient, began showing symptoms. Furthermore,
these four men share a large home occupied by 24 other people, including nine
children – and no one else got sick.

Strangely, the majority of MERS cases so far have been
men – and insights into this family’s interior life illustrate how Saudi men could have different environmental exposures than women. In this household, the
men – both the adults and adolescents – ate together, and separately, from the
women and children. The men also socialized and visited a local mosque together. And while the women cared for the sick men in their homes, they scarcely visited them once they were admitted to hospital
(this detail leads the study’s authors to suggest that maybe there is a reduced risk of
catching MERS in its earlier stages).

The need for "more coordinated international collaboration and sharing of clinical research." These exact words appear in the concluding paragraphs of the New England Journal of Medicine study, which was co-authored by officials with the Saudi Arabian ministry of health. Over the past few weeks, the WHO has been diplomatically signalling to Saudi Arabia that it wants MERS information to be shared more rapidly and transparently. One hopes this sentence is a signal back that the message has been received.

Jennifer Yang is the Star’s global health reporter.
She previously worked as a general assignment reporter and won a NNA in
2011 for her explanatory piece on the Chilean mining disaster. Follow her on Twitter: @jyangstar

Rukmini Callimachi, the West Africa Bureau Chief for The Associated Press, found a 10-page letter in a Timbuktu building once occupied by members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and wrote this amazing tale about Belomoktar.

It begins:

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — After years of trying to discipline him, the
leaders of Al Qaeda's North African branch sent one final letter to
their most difficult employee. In page after scathing page, they
described how he didn't answer his phone when they called, failed to
turn in his expense reports, ignored meetings and refused time and again
to carry out orders.

Most of all, they claimed he had failed to carry out a single spectacular operation, despite the resources at his disposal.

The employee, international terrorist Moktar Belmoktar, responded the
way talented employees with bruised egos have in corporations the world
over: He quit and formed his own competing group. And within months, he
carried out two lethal operations that killed 101 people in all: one of
the largest hostage-takings in history at a BP-operated gas plant in
Algeria in January, and simultaneous bombings at a military base and a
French uranium mine in Niger just last week.

Beyond the fact that apparently AQIM has expense forms, there is some good intelligence in the document, such as the discussion about ransom for kidnapped Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay.

In general, the document confirms the importance of the group's kidnapping operations -- approximately $89 million it states. It also explains why Belmoktar broke off relations with AQIM to form his own group, which reportedly led the January attack against an Algerian gas oil facility, with the help of two Canadians.

But let's face it.. it's the expense forms that are most talked about. It's like a perverse US Weekly magazine feature of "Stars Are Just Like Us." (Just in: Pregnant Reese Witherspoon had a tough time balancing her cell phone and grocery store purchases - Ciao Bella gelato squares and Palapa Azul fruit bars. She shops! She has babies! She eats fruit bars!).

But maybe understanding this strange normalcy of the "corporate" side of the terrorist group is important too. We've had other glimpses into Al Qaeda's operations (and in-fighting) in the documents uncovered in Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound, or discovered when the former leader of Al Qaeda in East Africa was killed in Somalia.

We know the group and its franchises have grappled with branding issues and there are even reports that they've had to adhere to the sex sells adage by trying to recruit on porn sites.

Getting inside the group -- even the business side -- may help counter its operations.

So beyond the ridicule, knowing that AQIM has some form of accounting department could help, in, uh, downsizing.

A member of "Dressed to Dance" rehearses before their show at the Tower Of David on Wednesday in Jerusalem's Old City. The show will feature outfits that were
designed by Picasso, Salvador Dali and designers from the last century. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

What gets young people into tobacco? According to the World Health Organization, one third of youngsters experiment with smoking because of exposures to tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

So for "World No Tobacco Day" on May 31, the WHO is calling for a global ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. In countries where such bans already exist, tobacco consumption has already decreased by an average of 7 per cent, according to WHO. In Turkey, bans (combined with other control measures) have cut tobacco use by more than 13 per cent since 2008.

But of course, advertising is also being used as a tool for persuading people to butt out — and some countries have fully embraced TV spots as a vehicle for scaring the bejesus out of people in the name of public health.

Over at the Guardian, contributor Arwa Mahdawi is convinced that Australia "produces some of the most gruesome social marketing in the world."

Exhibit A:

Mahdawi also compiled a few anti-smoking ads from other countries that have turned to the scare-em-to-health tactic. This one from the United Kingdom shows a bloody tumour blossoming on the end of a cigarette:

And this one, Mahdawi writes, aired in New York in 2009 but was actually borrowed from a non-profit organization based in — where else — Australia:

But do these kinds of ads work? Somesayno. But Mahdawi, a consultant at Contagious Magazine, points out that Australia has some of the lowest smoking rates worldwide (roughly 16 per cent, down from 34 per cent in 1980). This study in the British Medical Journal also suggests that scare tactics have effectively reduced smoking rates in Australia.

"While individual campaigns can't take all the credit for this decrease, they have certainly played some part," Mahdawi writes in the Guardian. "In any case, they've left an impression on me."

"I haven't lived in Oz for some years now, but I still get the occasional nightmare with 'Authorized by the Australian government, Canberra' tagged on at the end."

Jennifer Yang is the Star’s global health reporter.
She previously worked as a general assignment reporter and won a NNA in
2011 for her explanatory piece on the Chilean mining disaster. Follow her on Twitter: @jyangstar

It quite possibly can't get any worse than this in Venezuela -- not only has the South American nation recently faced a toilet paper shortage, now, they are running out of wine.

The Catholic Church is fearful they may soon have no wine, the symbolic blood of Christ, for Sunday mass.

Behold what Monsignor Lucker told BBC News: "(Our supplier) Bodegas Pomar have told us that they can no longer make
wine because they're facing difficulties."

The Catholic News Agency reported that while Venezuela is "not a country
known for the production of wine" the only national supplier has told
the Bishops they will not be able to meet the demand for wine used for
mass due to a shortage of ingredients.

The BBC also reported the Venezuelan arm of the church was unsure if they could afford importing wine from abroad.

A man carries toilet paper in a supermarket in Caracas on May 17.(REUTERS/Jorge Silva)

The country has experienced a number of food shortages of late from butter, to milk, coffee and cooking oil. Recently, the Associated Press reported the socialist Venezuelan government promised to import 50 million rolls of toilet papers to boost supplies as the store shelves were bare.

Price controls and controls on foreign currency are to blame for a shortage of imported goods, economists say.

Consumers are fed up. As Manuel Fagundes told the AP as he hunted for toilet paper in Caracas: “This is the last straw. I’m 71 years old and this is the first time
I’ve seen this.”

Tanya Talaga is the Star's global economics reporter. Follow her on Twitter @tanyatalaga

Dawood justified his reasoning by using a story from the early
days of Islamic history in which a warrior who did not want his wife to leave
the home to pray, hid on a dark street and molested her when she went outside.
She ran back in, and vowed that she would not do so again because the world was
corrupt, Gulf News said.

Saudi Arabia’s conservative religious establishment is
powerful but the government is not likely to approve of Dawood's call. To help the
economy, in recent years the authorities have been trying to encourage Saudi
nationals to do jobs considered menial which are typically filled by cheap labour from
South Asia, such as working at check out counters.

A lot of Saudi women do work outside the home but they tend
to be in middle class professional jobs such as law, medicine and academia. And
these are in all-female environments. The government is very slowly trying
to introduce mixed gender work places but Saudis are divided.

This amusing cartoon is circulating on Twitter as a response to Dawood:

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at he Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

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